


then I knew, yes I knew I should run, but then I heard her say, yeah

by ashintuku



Series: fox on the run [12]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Language Barrier, Mild Language, Misunderstandings, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 00:09:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11817099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashintuku/pseuds/ashintuku
Summary: “Hey! Watch it! I’ve got a head wound!”





	then I knew, yes I knew I should run, but then I heard her say, yeah

He was twenty-two years old, and he was probably going to die. 

Skidding around a corner, Peter bolted down the alleyway, climbed up a dumpster, and boosted his way up to the roof with his rocket boots; flinching to the left when a blaster round shot _way_ too close for comfort. 

“It’s not even that nice lookin’ a statue!” he said to himself, because he talked when he was nervous, and this sure as hell was nerve-wracking. He landed with a hard _thump_ on the roof, running over the flat rooftops and jumping the distance between building to building; hoping to get some distance between him and the museum guards. 

Yondu was going to kill him; he could feel it in his gut. He’d told him, again and again, that he had to be quiet and sneaky during this mission – and he had been! Right up until he got into the room with the priceless, butt-ugly statue of a goddess from a culture five clicks away that had been stolen like three hundred years ago and some cultural collector really wanted it back on its home soil. He hadn’t thought about the invisible sensors that usually stopped people from reaching into display cases and plucking priceless stolen artefacts out. He’d been too pleased with the fact that he’d managed to traverse the ventilation system and had successfully hacked the security cameras so that they were glitched for the next hour and a half. 

Cocky, Kraglin would call it. 

Dumbass would be Yondu’s words. 

They were both right, really. 

Another blaster round zipped passed him, singing the leather on his arm, and Peter looked over his shoulder to see three of the guards running after him on the roof. He imagined the other two were on the ground, waiting for him to run out of roofs to jump. 

“Shit, shit, _shit_!” 

He swung widely to the right, boosting up to a higher roof and scrambling over the edge. A stray shot skimmed his leg, and he hissed through his teeth but ignored it; pushing himself up and clambering to his feet. He bolted in the new direction, knowing it was going to take the guards at least a minute or two to change their own direction while they yelled orders at each other. See, this was why he was glad he worked alone: he could just do whatever the hell needed to be done, and he didn’t need to inform anyone else when a change of plan happened. 

It was nice. He could screw up his own missions in peace. 

The bag with the statue bounced on his hip, and he really hoped that there weren’t any tiny breakable pieces on the thing because they were probably broken off by now. Which, hey – if you were going to hire a bunch of space pirates to steal priceless artefacts for your collection, you had better be ready to deal with the fact that they might not come in a box with bubble wrap. That was just common sense. Ravagers got the job done, and they got it done fast: they didn’t always get it done _cleanly_. 

He turned to look over his shoulder, saw the guards finally coming after him a roof or two back, and laughed; turning back around just in time to see the edge of the roof and nothing for him to jump to. 

“Shit!” 

He tried to skid to a stop, stumbled, and fell forward. Grabbing the statue, he tried to get his rocket boots to start up. They started, stopped because he fumbled, started again, and it slowed him down, but he still managed to land himself in the dumpster, hitting the back of his head (multiple times, holy _ow_ ). He groaned, pressing a hand to the back of his head; the scar from his translator pulsing like he’d just hit his funny bone. He heard loud voices above, then, and froze in the dumpster, straining to listen. 

The words were a garbled mess, but he blamed that on sheer distance; what was important was that they started to fade away after a second. He waited another minute or two, just in case they were baiting him out, before he removed his helmet with the press of a button. He climbed out of the dumpster, falling out of it inelegantly, brushed off the worst of the crap, and strolled out of the alleyway straight into a commercial street. 

Sweet, beautiful crowds of people. He tucked the bag with the statue under his jacket and made his way through the crowds. The mishmash of languages rolled over him in a blur, but he didn’t need to particularly pay attention to them; he just kept an eye out for a hint of uniforms while he made his way through the street, down another busy street (full of restaurants, and boy did some of those smell good) and finally to the docking port where visitors came and went. 

He found the _Milano_ right where he left her, climbed into the M-Ship like it was just another day of tourism, and flew out without further problems. 

“Man, I love a successful mission,” He said to himself. His voice sounded a bit funny, but that was fine; it was probably where he had hit his head. 

He broke atmo and travelled the two clicks over where the _Eclector_ was floating, sending out the code to prove to whoever was on duty that it was actually him and he was coming in for a landing. As he approached the bay doors, they opened, and he steered himself up and in to his usual spot; landing with little fanfare. He then went ahead and started to shut down the ship, barely even twitching when the doors opened not two minutes later and angry stomping footsteps came into the cockpit. 

“ _T’chka!_ ”

Whoa wait a minute. 

Peter swung around, seeing Yondu standing there with his hands on his hips and his usual scowl; red eyes narrowed, sharp crooked teeth bared: the whole shebang. Kraglin came up behind him, thumbs in his belt loops and expression one of ‘you’re so screwed, kid’ on his face. It was normal; he knew they probably heard about the breach in security in the museum, and he knew that he was in for a yelling – but he was not expecting weird made-up words in the mix. 

“ _C’fhack che t’ik_ goddamn mind?” 

“Uh. What?” 

Yondu paused, mouth open to continue his rant, and squinted his eyes. Peter blinked widely at him. The Centaurian turned to Kraglin, then, saying something that Peter only caught half of, and the first mate walked over to him and jerked his head to the side. 

“Hey! Watch it! I’ve got a head wound!” 

Kraglin ignored him, which was just as well; Peter just realized that while he knew exactly what he was saying, half the words that came out of his mouth did not sound at all like what they usually did. 

Well, shit. 

“ _Fishion_ translator’s _bron, Denarian_.” 

Peter’s eyes widened as he finally figured out what happened. 

“Awh, hell.” 

~+~

Before they did anything, they returned the statue to the buyer, got their credits, and split it how they agreed beforehand. Not that Peter could argue it anyway, no one could understand him. 

Well, not completely true, he thought to himself, tapping the side of his Walkman as comforting music played in his ears. They each got bits and pieces of sentences, common words they all knew, and Peter figured that was because he hadn’t fully mastered the English language when he’d been on Earth – he was _eight_ when he was abducted, after all – and so he had learned other languages as a fluke. The translator made everything he said sound like English, but now he knew that really wasn’t the case. 

It was educational! He wished he’d learned it by not _breaking his translator_. 

He tried to avoid the rest of the crew, even the well-meaning ones like Oblo and Tullk. He _definitely_ avoided Taserface and his lackies, because they would just delight in the fact that he could barely understand them. Never mind they would barely be able to understand him: his broken translator meant that everyone’s translators were unable to bounce back off of his, making any kind of translating currently impossible. 

He groaned, smacking the back of his head against the wall, and flinched when his door opened and Yondu looked at him, unamused. 

“ _T’chka, t’ik chakha grit t’ikcha_ concussion.” 

“Good to know.” 

Yondu frowned at him, rubbing at his jaw, before he tossed a pad at him. Peter stared at it, slowly looking up at the Ravager captain and raising his eyebrow. Yondu rolled his eyes. 

“ _Chit. T’ik._ Goddamn. _Crikcha._ ”

Peter blinked, looked at the pad again, and noticed it was on a blank writing file. _Oh_. 

He quickly wrote out a sentence. 

_I’m good for thievin’, too_. 

Yondu read the message, snorted, and cuffed the back of his head lightly; but there was a grin on his face, and Peter knew he was more amused than anything. 

He ignored the little bit of pride he felt at making Yondu laugh. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Yondu laughed at pretty much everything he did. He was pretty sure he was the man’s number one source of entertainment.

The Centaurian left, then, the door closing behind him, and Peter stared down at the pad before lying down on his bed and turning up his music. 

At least he had some way to communicate if he really needed to. 

~+~

Two days and a dozen or so jumps later, they made it to an out-of-the-way planet where they didn’t ask any questions. They went to the clinic, where Yondu dragged him through the halls and Kraglin followed after them, gun in hand and expression that wary-bored he always wore when he was acting like nothing mattered but he was paying attention to everything. 

(Peter knew Kraglin grew up in a situation even shittier than he had. Kraglin had told him bits and pieces when he was younger, while teaching him quick moves to get out of fights and the best ways to sneak up on someone to shank them. He never shanked anyone, he didn’t like the thought, but it was useful to know all the same. Mostly he was just amazed Kraglin could act so normal after growing up like that.) 

They were led into a room by a green and blue skinned nurse, who smiled at Peter and winked two of their four eyes at him before leaving to get the doctor. Peter grinned after them, shrugging when Yondu gave him a look. 

A luphomoid doctor came in, then, talking rapidly to Yondu who shrugged and said a few half-understood responses. The doctor then walked over to Peter, turned his head without further ado, and slid what felt like a syringe into his neck, right where the translator was. He hissed but sat still, squeezing the edge of the bed and closing his eyes tight. He felt the syringe slide out of his neck, his translator scar feeling tight and sore. And then, after a minute, the voices around him stared to make sense. 

“—shouldn’t take too long, now, ah, there’s comprehension. You understand me now, yes?” 

“Yep.” 

“And I understand you. The translator should be fine. I upgraded it, as well – that was an older model. Don’t worry, Captain, that will not be an extra charge. Your boy is just able to catalogue more languages than before, which I’m sure will be useful in your particular line of work.” 

Yondu grunted, crossing his arms, and Peter reached back and poked at his scar. He was immediately cuffed. 

“Hey!” 

“Don’t play with that, boy, we just got it goddamn fixed!” 

“I almost miss the weird noises.” Yondu rolled his eyes, pushing at his shoulder, and he left with the captain; Kraglin taking a moment to pay the doctor upfront before they left the planet. 

As they made their way back to the _Warbird_ , Peter frowned and looked over at Yondu again. 

“What language _do_ you speak, Yondu? Kraglin speaks like, lower Xandarian—”

“Wha’s that s’posed t’mean?” 

“—but you don’t speak anything like what catalogued Centaurian sounds like. I mean. A few words here and there, but it sounded like pidgin, or the pronunciation was a little off.” 

Yondu glared at him, baring his teeth in a scowl, before he looked away and cracked his neck. 

“Learned the Centaurian m’self, when I could. Mostly speak lesser Kree-Lar.” 

“Lesser?” 

“S’what the slaves learned, boy,” Yondu rolled his eyes, glaring at him again. “Now quit askin’ yer goddamn questions. And be more careful with that translator, y’hear me? They ain’t cheap!” 

Peter rolled his eyes, shoving his hands into his pockets and pouting. 

“Yeah, whatever.” 

“Brat.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _T’chka!_ : Boy!  
>  _C’fhack che t’ik_ goddamn mind?: Are you outta yer goddamn mind?  
>  _Fishion_ translator’s _bron, Denarian_.: Think his translator's broken, Cap'n.  
>  _T’chka, t’ik chakha grit t’ikcha_ concussion.: Boy, yer gonna give yerself a concussion.  
>  _Chit. T’ik._ Goddamn. _Crikcha._ : Use. Yer. Goddamn. Words.
> 
> I just guessed what Denarian meant, since Saal and Dey are both called Denarian at one point in the movie, and that seems like a rank. A higher rank? Maybe? Yes.
> 
> Also I know, the made-up languages aren't perfect - but I tried! 
> 
> This is based almost entirely on a tweet I read from James Gunn when someone asked about whether or not Peter was the only one who spoke English. He said, and I quote: "Of course not. And I never said Quill spoke English anymore." So like. Maybe Peter speaks a mishmash of languages because he grew up on a diverse ship, but because the translator makes it sound like English, he never realized?
> 
> 'I'm good for thievin', too' is a reference to an earlier work when Yondu said 'use your words, you're good for that'. In case anyone forgot.


End file.
